Sleep disorders in children with self-limited epilepsy with centrotemporal spikes: a cross-sectional controlled study

Self-limited epilepsy with centrotemporal spikes (SeLECTS) is the most common focal epilepsy syndrome of childhood. Sleep disorders are common in affected children but often remain underevaluated. We aimed to assess sleep disorders in children with SeLECTS compared with healthy controls using multiple validated sleep scales.

This cross-sectional controlled study included 65 children aged 6-14 years with SeLECTS and 65 age- and sex-matched healthy controls. The Children's Sleep Habits Questionnaire (CSHQ), the Sleep Disturbance Scale for Children (SDSC), the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) and the Epworth Sleepiness Scale (ESS) were administered to all participants.

Sleep disorders were detected in children with SeLECTS in 96.9% by the CSHQ, 44.6% by the SDSC, 13.8% by the ESS and 9.2% by the PSQI, with no significant difference from controls. Nominal associations were observed between sex and several CSHQ/SDSC subscale scores, between recent seizure activity and the SDSC sleep-wake transition disorder score, and between group and total sleep duration (all raw p < 0.05); however, none of these remained significant after false discovery rate (FDR) correction for multiple comparisons and should be considered exploratory. All four sleep scales were positively correlated with one another (p < 0.001), a finding that remained robust after correction.

Sleep complaints are highly prevalent in children with SeLECTS, and simple validated scales may offer a practical approach to outpatient screening; however, the sex-, seizure-, and group-related associations identified in this exploratory analysis require confirmation in larger, adequately powered cohorts.